Poll: Reputation Function - Stay or Go?

What do you think? Keep it or toss it?

i'm inclined to say toss it. here's why:

1. it's a good thing on ebay, where money is being exchanged, to know a person's reputation. i dont think we have that issue. maybe with the online marketplace? but i think that if a member was running scams, the mods would ban them, and they couldnt easily start a new account, so the likelihood of fraud is low?

2. 'reputations' often turn into a means for goofy behavior. i used to spend time over at flyertalk.com (excellent travel site if you travel a lot.) and they had it for awhile. cliques formed, people were 'punished' and all sorts of non-travel discussions consumed people's time as they fought over the repuations. the mods over there eventually said, 'this isnt worth the hassle.'

3. it takes a short period of time to get to know folks in here. once you do, you know who the right wing nuts are, the left wing nuts, the secret rulers, the flat broke painters who chug tequilla, the wise-asses, and the people that talk about motorcycles. so i dont really need the reputation thing.

4. i ask this anytime anyone suggests to me that we track something - what are we going to do with the data? will it result in bans? access to swag? preferred camping spots at rallies? i can't think of anything useful to do with the info.

5. if i disagree with a post, i prefer to post and say so. same as if i agree. the feedback button is either a chicken way for me to disagree with someone, or a weasel way to boost agreement with someone i agree with.

6. there are some folks in here that IMHO have a great *motorcycle* reputation, but a heinous *political* reputation. so since im here to learn about motorcycles, riding, and safety, and i don't really give a crap who your god is, or how infantile your thought processes are for forming political opinions, i'd like to know if a person is considered an expert on motorcycle stuff. my hunch is that most of the feedback is generated more often in the campfire discussions, and when a guy says, 'loosen the bolts a quarter turn' people don't pile on the feedback. so this guy might be doing good stuff, but not getting good feedback. then that same guy could post something like, 'im pretty sure evolution is real' and everyone would go ballistic and take time to give him negative feedback. so i worry that most of the 'reputation' is based on our personal lives, our political stuff, or whatever.

having said all that, i say keep it for a bit, but none of us should be too attached to it, and we should be ready to launch it. also - the feedback is anonymous? i think if youre going to ding someone, it ought to be public.

User reputation seems to be a derisive element of our forum

Seems to me that while it could definitely be telling, username brings up some good points. What the heck does it actually mean?

From what I can figure not really a whole lot. It could easily turn into a clique thing or another bone of contention. While the idea is interesting I am not seeing any benefit.

I think that anyone who has read any number of threads here, can quickly spot those members who have a reputation, good or bad, regarding their posts.

i'm giving brad good reputation for agreeing with me...

(or at least not disagreeing...)

username said:

i'm giving brad good reputation for agreeing with me...

(or at least not disagreeing...)

Click to expand...

Actually since you took your aluminun foil off, you only think that you had that idea that I agreed with...

My opinion

I just want to say I voted to keep the reputation points, mostly because I want to see how it plays out. It's not that I disagree with anyone's opinion about it (a) wasting bandwidth, including this post, (b) being too anonymous, or (c) being pointless.

While it's too bad that there is one unfortunate lightning rod in our community, I don't really think most of us are just pinging people out of spite. I hope everyone is sincere about their reputation point giving/taking.

Anyway, since I'm the first to suggest keeping it (for amusement only), I thought I'd admit to casting that lone vote.

merrittgene said:

I just want to say I voted to keep the reputation points, mostly because I want to see how it plays out.

Click to expand...

Ditto.

Lee makes good points, and he is probably right (tin foil or no) but it would be interesting to see where it goes.

So far, it seems to be a tool for beating Flash over the head.

If it continues in that vein, well... trash it.

Ian

Visian said:

So far, it seems to be a tool for beating Flash over the head.

If it continues in that vein, well... trash it.

Ian

Click to expand...

Yeah. That was a concern of mine when we turned it on. Flash has been kind of a lightning rod and I was concerned that folks were going to pile on.

But so far, the poll looks like people want it gone.

I'm going to leave this poll open until tomorrow night, which should allow the folks that access from work to vote and read. I think Monday morning is historically one of our busiest times of the week.

As an FYI, we're typically getting 130 to 150 unique registered visitors per day. The new admin panel has some neat statistics available.

KBasa said:

As an FYI, we're typically getting 130 to 150 unique registered visitors per day. The new admin panel has some neat statistics available.

Click to expand...

most of the folks i've observed in here seem unique...

Toss it. I didn't even know we had such a thing, untill I found out by accident last Thursday while playing around in user cp.
What are these ## used for?? Brownie points?? We pretty much know who instigate things and personally, I think it makes for an exiting read on this board for the bored.
I enjoy the tech articles, the travel stories and such. That to me is the most important part of this site. It is afterall about

In paid subscription forums (yes, there are some out there) points are used to generate rewards for the members.

Toss it.

The voting wasn't even close.

It's gone. Thanks everybody.

crap, i wanted to give you 'good reputation' for holding the poll and responding to it, but now i can't!

I'm glad you tossed it. I think people should read for themselves and make
their own decision whether someone is a "valuable" contributor or not.

Ian